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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Trust Fund Football...and Vitamins

When we were younger we used to buy cheap seat tickets to Denver Broncos games outside the stadium and then once we were inside we'd try to move down closer to the field. That was how we rolled. It was a great way to get quality seats at the price of the cheap seats. But it didn't come without labor, stress, worry, and even getting the boot at times.

A couple of us trust fund kids heading to the game!(any resemblance to actual trust fund kids is purely coincidental.)

We'd grab our cheap seats, get acclimated to the high altitude up in the "nose bleeds," and then glance around the stadium's lower deck for a group of unoccupied seats. After about ten minutes into the game we'd make our move. We'd stealthily sneak past the usher by creating a diversion and then settle into our new seats. It was risky because we knew that the proper owners may just be held up outside the stadium at their favorite tailgating site, or maybe stuck in traffic, or perhaps they were snagging a footlong at the concessions stand (in which case I might have had to inform them of the dubious contents within one of those footlongs, but I digress), but we didn't care. We risked it anyway for the view. Every time a group of fans strolled towards our aisle, a little nervous, we planned our escape. If the true owners made it in that day, we played dumb, blamed each other, and retreated back to the friendly but vertigo inducing cheap seats. But...if the true owners never showed, we pretended to be young, bank rolled trust fund kids with too much money and time on our hands, enjoying our seats and the game!

Yeah...taking a daily vitamin is just like that (I know you were beginning to wonder where I was going with this...). The best way to enjoy great seats at a Broncos game is probably to actually purchase them (though I might argue with myself on this point on certain levels...but for the sake of the metaphor, I will concede the point). It's less like cheating and more like the real thing. And it's the same with getting your vitamins. The best way to get vitamins is in food, the natural way. Eating fruits, vegetables, and other natural foods provides the body with the daily essentials the way we were intended to get them. It's less like cheating and more like the real thing.

The problem arises when we don't always get these essentials. What then? Studies show that less than 1% of us get the recommended daily vitamins our bodies crave. Well in that case, go ahead and sneak down to the lower level and hijack someone else's seat (is this metaphor still working?) by taking a multivitamin in pill form. Multivitamins are not the best way to get vitamins, but they offer a power packed punch of what we need and may not be getting. Remember, they are called "suplemental vitamins" for a reason. They are meant to supplement our regular diet.

I take a multi-vitamin each day...just to cover my bases. And I do it the way that Dr. Oz recommends: half in the morning and half at night, and with food (food helps the body absorb the vitamins better than an empty stomach). I prefer the generic "One A Day," or "Centrum" vitamins because...you guessed it, they are the cheapest. Though I wouldn't encourage you to rely on the multi-vitamin alone (it causes stress, worry, and sometimes you get booted from the nice seats), they are good to have to supplement your diet, especially since most of us don't get enough. So keep taking them, or begin taking them...Dr. Oz style. But also search for foods high in vitamins that your body needs and get them the natural way. You'll feel much more like some spoiled, trust fund kid with too much money and time on your hands. (I think I've now taken that metaphor as far as it goes...my apologies.)

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About Me

I live in Minnesota with my beautiful wife and 4 children. About six years ago we completely overhauled the way we ate...for both health and humanitarian reasons. But since we operate on a single salary income, it had to be cheap and easy! This is my story.